I stared at the notice until the screen dimmed.

Mr.

Gable squared his folder with the edge of the rail before he opened it.

“Your Honor, my client left her children with a licensed caregiver,” he said.

“The caregiver didn’t show up.

That’s a staffing failure, not a failure of parenting.”

Chloe had told me in the elevator that an emergency motion gets twenty minutes and that the judge remembers whatever he hears last.

Gable handed up a single page in a plastic sleeve.